U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,322 discloses an apparatus for drying articles of clothing and the like in the open air. As shown therein, a drum of a convenient size having screen-like sides is rotatably supported on a frame. A motor mounted on the frame is coupled to the drum by a belt and rotates the drum so that the objects therein are tumbled.
It has been found that a dryer constructed as shown therein works extremely well and has numerous advantages over conventional clothes dryers which are enclosed and which use heat produced, usually, by electricity or gas. The most obvious advantage, of course, is the great saving in energy since only a small part of the power consumed by a conventional dryer is needed to turn the drum of the dryer disclosed in the above-mentioned patent. It has also been found that clothing regularly dried by tumbling along with the natural circulation of air, with or without exposure to sunlight, lasts somewhat longer and is much less subject to shrinkage and other forms of degradation which commonly result from the relatively high temperatures of a conventional dryer. Furthermore, the dryer capacity can be made much larger without meaningful additional expense; the dryer is usable to dry articles when washing items damageable by the heat of conventional dryers; it is effective to remove lint, dust and mud from clothing instead of or before washing under conditions in which most dryers would be damaged or would be subsequently unusable without disassembly and cleaning; and many articles of clothing are much more comfortable to wear after having been dried in an open air tumble dryer than after drying by any other technique.
It has been found, however, that the apparatus shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,322 is not completely suitable for use under some circumstances and is difficult and expensive to manufacture. A major problem with that dryer is that the rotating drum is exposed, raising the possibility that a person, particularly a child, might be injured by inserting a hand, for example, between the drum and frame. Also, although the dryer of that patent is intended primarily for use out of doors, it has been found that it very useful indoors as well. Accordingly, some form of lint control is desirable.